The Beginnings Of Cnc Engineering
The history of automation from the cuckoo clock to computerized numerical control automation in precision engineering is a study in the development of machines used as tools and controlling tools. Machines that could produce a product was the work of manually built machines, but producing a machine by feeding an abstract code into a computer that could produce a product was a leap into the computerized numerical control machining.
In the 1800′s, inventors Thomas Blanchard and Christopher Miner Spencer developed lathes, which were an innovation from the cam technology that had been used in music boxes and cuckoo clocks. The work of Jacquard Loom and Charles Babbage in mechanical computers being abstractly programmed was a reality in the 1800′s but their work was not picked up by the machine tool industry.
Using a stylus to trace templates like the Pratt & Whitney “Keller Machine” industrialized automation through the use of hydraulics. General Motors in the 1950′s invented a method of capturing a machinist’s movements and replaying them on command by a machine.
The reading of the abstract code by the machine to the degree of reliability that was required was a problem in computerized numerical control machine development. The servo, which gave right measurement information, solved that problem after its invention.
The performance of two servos made a Selsyn. A variety of mechanical and electrical systems could read the products of a Selsyn to ensure that the right information had been transferred.
A Swedish immigrant employed by General Electric, Ernst F.W. Alexanderson, suggested that Selsyn’s could be used for machining control. General Electric used Alexanderson’s use of a mechanical computer that amplified torque letting big machines to be run by little force, in their gun laying system for United States Navy ships.
However, the efforts of trying to make a helicopter propeller by John T. Parsons in 1942 credited him as the father of the numerical control machine. In an effort to get MIT suggestions on his punch card input machine, Parsons turned to MIT who took his invention and left him out of production, greatly surprising Parsons..
Using computer control, punch tapes made on the Whirlwind were made by John Runyon. A uniform “programming” language for numerical control introducing computerized numerical control was proposed in June 1956, by the Air Force.
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